a question for my mother

the snake is hungry 

so the snake will eat 

and eat it does, chewing, gnawing, 

and will you ever notice, little thing, 

that it is your own tail 

you are swallowing? 

from salt and foam and scales 

steal the hearts of stone 

nacreous shells, dying husks, 

the honey-sweet flesh that once 

clung to its bones 

to die of thirst. 

meet me at the end of the world 

the space between firestorms and tsunamis 

across the acid oceans 

and here, where the rot 

has begun to reclaim the cities at last.